The invention relates generally to the field of ultrasound diagnosis of living biological structures, and more particularly to methods for real-time analysis and measurement of temporal tissue variations in ultrasonic signals for quality improvement of tissue images and qualitative and quantitative characterization of the size/shape of the imaged objects.
Techniques for real-time acquisition of a sequence of ultrasonic 2D images are well known. Techniques for real-time temporal filtering of 2D images with a recursive filter are also known. Obtaining a binary quantification of a given object based on thresholding of the information in a single 2D image is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,195,521, which issued to M. E. Hewlett and T. A. Shoup on Mar. 23, 1993 and in J. Serra. Image Analysis and Mathematical Morphology, Academic Press, London, 1982. Hewlett and Serra also discuss techniques for computing the area of a binary 2D-object and volume estimates based on a binary 2D-object and 3D geometry assumptions.